ville.
One-fifth larger than before, you are now more powerful, more
consolidated, and have wider hopes. Composed of six different
nations, you will be now united under a constitution the best
possible for your social and material condition. ... The selections
I have made for your chief offices have been made independently of
all idea of party or feeling of locality. As for that of President,
I have found no one among you with sufficient claims on public
opinion, sufficiently free from local feelings, and who had
rendered great enough services to his country, to intrust it to
him.... Your people has only local feelings: it must now rise to
national feelings."

In accordance with this last grand and prophetic remark, the name
Italian was substituted for that of Cisalpine: and thus, for the first
time since the Middle Ages, there reappeared on the map of Europe that
name, which was to evoke the sneers of diplomatists and the most
exalted patriotism of the century. If Bonaparte had done naught else,
he would deserve immortal glory for training the divided peoples of
the peninsula for a life of united activity.

The new constitution was modelled on that of France; but the pretence
of a democratic suffrage was abandoned. The right of voting was
accorded to three classes, the great proprietors, the clerics and
learned men, and the merchants. These, meeting in their several
"Electoral Colleges," voted for the members of the legislative bodies;
a Tribunal was also charged with the maintenance of the constitution.
By these means Bonaparte endeavoured to fetter the power of the
reactionaries no less than the anti-clerical fervour of the Italian
Jacobins. The blending of the new and the old which then began shows
the hand of the master builder, who neither sweeps away materials
merely because they are old, nor rejects the strength that comes from
improved methods of construction: and, however much we may question
the disinterestedness of his motives in this great enterprise, there
can be but one opinion as to the skill of the methods and the
beneficence of the results in Italy.[194]

The first step in the process of Italian unification had now been
taken at Lyons. A second soon followed. The affairs of the Ligurian
Republic were in some confusion; and an address came from Genoa
begging that their differences might be composed by the First Consul.
The spontaneity of thi